The IIHS said, in its report on Wednesday, that the Outlander Sport's side curtain airbag, indicated by the yellow arrow (left), "didn't deploy, and the dummy's head slid off the front airbag." The IIHS then highlighted the Jeep Compass test, to the right, in which the front and side curtain airbags "worked together to keep the dummy's head from contacting any stiff structure or outside objects that could cause injury."

The 2018 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport and 2018 Ford Escape floundered in the latest batch of passenger-side crash testing evaluations carried out by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

IIHS evaluated seven 2018 model year vehicles in its passenger-side small overlap crash test, five of which garnered good ratings, including the BMW X1, Mitsubishi Outlander, Chevrolet Equinox, GMC Terrain and Jeep Compass.

To qualify for IIHS' 2018 Top Safety Pick+ designation, a vehicle must earn a "good" or "acceptable" passenger-side rating, and a "good" headlight rating. Thus far, no vehicle in IIHS' small-SUV category has garnered a Top Safety Pick+ award, "because they fall short of a good rating for headlights," the organization said in a release.

"Many of them either are getting downgrades for excessive glare or don't have enough visibility down the road, and so, missed our good rating," IIHS senior research engineer Becky Mueller told Automotive News.

The good news is, said Mueller, in a previous series of passenger-side crash testing evaluations, nine small SUVs earned the 2018 Top Safety Pick designation.

Structure

Out of all seven newly rated 2018 models, none received a better than "acceptable" rating for structure, IIHS said.

Across the board, the Outlander Sport received a marginal rating and the Ford Escape earned a poor rating in part for allowing "too much intrusion into the occupant compartment" on the passenger-side, IIHS said.

"The Escape struggled in the test as intruding structure seriously compromised space for the right-front passenger," IIHS said. "Intrusion measured ten inches at the upper door-hinge pillar, compared with 5 inches in the driver-side test."

Crash test dummy measurements for the Escape indicate that right hip injuries are likely if a real-world crash of this level were to occur, the IIHS said.

"In 2017, Ford redesigned the driver side of the Escape to perform better and protect better and so they have an acceptable rating on the driver side, but they didn't make the same kind of structural changes to the passenger side," said Mueller.

"There were a number of things that were problematic to the Ford Escape that contributed to that poor passenger side rating," said Mueller.

Side-airbag snafus

The side curtain airbags on the passenger-side of both the Escape and Outlander Sport failed to deploy, however the airbags did deploy on the driver's side in both vehicles.

In the Escape, the dummy's head came in contact with the front airbag before sliding around the side, while in the Outlander Sport, the dummy's head "barely" came in contact with the front airbag and slipped off the right side -- prompting the head to come in contact with the upper interior trim panel on the door, IIHS said.

"That's not something we expect to see after so many years of crash testing," Mueller said the release. "Side curtain airbags should deploy in crashes like this."